‘Genshin Impact’ Is Apple And Google’s Game Of The Year, And Making $6+ Million A Day

One of the biggest games of the year is not from any known franchises like Call of Duty, FIFA or Assassin’s Creed, it’s miHoYo’s smash hit Genshin Impact, a free-to-play open world RPG from China that has found enormous success both in the east and the west.

In the past 24 hours, Genshin Impact has racked up a pair of high profile accolades. First, they won Google Play’s Game of the Year Award:

Then, less than a day later, it also won Apple’s Game of the Year for the App Store:

It’s been a massive hit on mobile, where Sensor Tower reports it has made nearly $400 million in two months, averaging almost $6 million a day in mobile revenue.

Key phrase there, mobile revenue.

While Genshin is played heavily on mobile in many regions, specifically China and Japan, it is also out on two other huge platforms, PC and PlayStation, where revenue estimates have not been calculated. Even if the bulk of its revenue is from mobile, what’s the actual total? $600 million and $8 million a day? More? Regardless, it’s a nearly unprecedented success story.

Genshin is so profitable because of its controversial, yet commonplace monetization scheme where it uses gambling mechanics referred to as a “gacha” system to have players try to get lucky to land new heroes. While some games may offer new characters for free or for a flat fee, you can’t just pay $10 to have access to a newly released hero. You might have to spend over $300 to “guarantee” yourself a rare new hero because of a tangled web of drop rates and mercy pulls and all sorts of other gacha terminology. So many players are not just spending the standard $60 on this free game, they’re spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on it.

And yet, you don’t win Game of the Year awards for being profitable and Genshin Impact also has the good fortune of actually being…a great game. The world is gorgeous, the characters lively and memorable. The story…slightly confusing but actually pretty good if you follow it. Combat and the elemental interaction system is fantastic. And the “meat” of the game, the world and the story quests, is all free. There’s no paying to access any of that, so there’s plenty to do even if you may have a “weaker” team by not spending tons of money for the best heroes and to get them to the highest levels.

Genshin Impact shows no signs of slowing down. It has already released five new heroes in two months and a large 1.1 Update with significant new story quests. Next up is an even larger update, supposedly coming in December, which will add even more story and open up a new section of the map for the first time. And every time a new hero is released, it rains more money on the game.

It’s been a wild ride for Genshin so far, but I expect this to remain one of the biggest games in the world for a while. It has staying power.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels Herokiller and Herokiller 2, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.